A blog about an actress, silent film, and the Jazz Age; and occasionally the Denishawn Dance Company, writer Frank Wedekind, his character Lulu, Weimar Germany, Hollywood, the state of Kansas, books, music, art, history and other things sometimes only tangentially related to the heart of the matter, written on a regular basis by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the LBS.

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Louise Brooks appears on page 16 of the current, October 31st, issue of the New Yorker. The image (pictured here) is captioned and references an exhibit at the Danziger Projects gallery in New York City.

The gallery had been hosting an exhibit, "Edward Steichen - The Last Printing" (September 15 through October 29, 2011).

Danziger Gallery opened their fall 2011 schedule with a show of 80 Edward Steichen photographs printed by the renowned photographer George Tice. Tice was the last person to print for Steichen in his lifetime. These prints remind us not only of Steichen's genius - and his remarkable talent for portraiture - but also highlight the formidable quality of printing that George Tice has been known for throughout his career. What follows are a few snippets from the gallery press release.

"By the mid-1920s Steichen was the highest-paid photographer in America. In 1923 he was hired as chief photographer for Condé Nast Publications, and at one point in the 1920s he earned $100,000 a year from his advertising work alone. "

"Steichen's portraits have survived the test of time. He had an uncanny intuition for how to distill the public personae of the famous and make them at once familiar and iconic. It was this that makes him the founding father of our present-day cult of celebrity. His portraits have a extraordinary place in our visual memory – his startling depiction of J.P. Morgan as the archetypical robber baron, clutching the chair arm that resembles a gleaming dagger; his close-up of a feline Gloria Swanson, glowering behind black-lace foliage; his restrained observation of an impossibly handsome and debonair Gary Cooper."

"Steichen's ingenuity in portraiture was coaxing his sitters into heightened expressions of their innermost character. He once considered going into the movies, and there was indeed a cinematic quality in much of his work. As Greta Garbo told him after one shoot: "You should be a motion-picture director. You understand." Sometimes performing artists even made his ideas their own. Steichen's portrait of Fred Astaire silhouetted against his own larger-than-life shadow was the inspiration for similar setups in the dancer's later films."

Launched in 1995, the Louise Brooks Society (www.pandorasbox.com) is an online archive and international fan club devoted to the silent film star best known for her role as Lulu in Pandora's Box. Our motto, "To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world." - Salman Rushdie

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This blog is authored by THOMAS GLADYSZ, founding Director of the Louise Brooks Society. It is a continuation of the old LBS blog at LiveJournal, which started in 2002. Please send comments, questions, or material to share to silentfilmbuffATgmailDOTcom